Note to
As of last night, Luke Wroblewski from Polar told me that they had, "collected 6,811 opinions [from] about 1,100 unique voters." Based on the current results, it appears that among the bright colors for the iPhone 5C, the order of preference is cyan, lime, banana and melon. But in polls between the bright colors and white, white wins by a 3-to-1 margin. Similarly, for the more sophisticated 5S palette, black is the clear winner over silver, but both black and silver win by almost a 4-to-1 margin over champagne/gold.
My current tallies for the 5C show Lime 497 vs Cyan 772; Banana 640 vs Melon 544; White 836 vs Cyan 308; and White 250 vs Banana 87. For the 5S I show Black 951 vs Champagne 253; Black 681 vs Silver 531 ; and Silver 913 vs Gold 257.
What's going on here? It is possible that the sample size is not large enough to be significant or skewed in some way. More likely though is that the data reveals the essential conformity among iPhone users. Most of us don't want to stand out. This is where Apple's marketing around the color choices will be interesting.
It is possible that once the colors get out there in the wild that people will be more comfortable with the new choices. One would imagine younger people being more attracted to the bright colors and the fashionable to the gold. Hopefully Apple's quantity orders are in line with consumers' initial preferences and will expand with their interest.
There are many ideas about where the ne bright palette come from. I suggested Kandinsky and the early abstractionists yesterday, others have pointed to the Windows Phone. Wroblewski, father of a small child, has found a unique reference point: the Hungry Hungry Hippos game! So far though Polar voters find this connection more likely a "coincidence" than a specific "design intent."
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